Not only is Texas ‘too hot to hoot’ but it’s also national Palindrome Week

Texas has it’s own palindromic city named Anna.

Do geese see God?

That’s the only question we should be asking ourselves. At least, it is during Palindromes Week a.k.a the most symmetrical time of the year. In case you hadn’t noticed, the dates for the next five days will be the same backward and forward.

Palindromes are any word, phrase, number or other sequence of characters which are the same no matter which direction you read them. In honor of this phenomenon, here are a few fun facts about palindromes.

1. Weird Al Yankovic once made a Bob Dylan parody called “Bob” using nothing but palindromic lines: “Lisa Bonet ate no basil / Warsaw was raw / Was it a car or a cat I saw?” Honestly, it’s pretty catchy.

2. Texas has its own special palindrome. Though we have more than 900 cities, a little town of Anna in the northeast is a palindrome. And in case you’re looking for a phrase even remotely related to the state, there’s always “Bush saw Sununu swash sub.”

3. We use palindromes more often than you’d think in our daily vocabulary. Some examples are “madam,” “civic,”sexes,” “noon” and “stats.”

4. The word “aibohphobia” is a palindrome and means fear of palindromes. “Ailiphilia” is also the same backward and forward but means love for palindromes.

5. Five-digit palindrome dates aren’t all that rare. According to Aziz Inan, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Portland, five-digit dates occur every year whereas Mother’s Day won’t be a palindrome for another 789.